You might not know Tom Hopper by name, but you've probably seen him on your screen. Over the past decade, the English actor has been a staple not only in UK favorites (Doctor Who, Merlin), but more recently, in some of the shows Americans can’t stop binge-watching, including Netflix's new show The Umbrella Academy.

Hopper showed up on the cultishly beloved Starz adventure series Black Sails,and, most notably, as Samwell Tarly's younger brother Dickon on HBO’s Game of Thrones in 2017. (Dickon, the favored son of the Tarly family, is not so bright, but his jawline makes quite the impression.) To switch things up, Hopper also starred in alongside Amy Schumer in the 2018 comedy movie I Feel Pretty.

Hopper’s golden-age-of-streaming bona fides are about to be bolstered even more. The 34-year-old plays Luther Hargreeves, also known as Spaceboy, in the ensemble cast of superheroes carrying a lot of emotional baggage in Umbrella Academy, out February 15. (Netflix, which has been on a tear of canceling its Marvel-based superhero shows owned by rival Disney, pivoted to source material from the lesser-known but widely respected Dark Horse Comics.)

So get ready for a lot more of that jawline. We talked to Hopper about his workout to get his body superhero-ready, how Arnold Schwarzenegger made him lose it at the movies, and why he loathes the treadmill.

Men's Health: You must be getting recognized a lot more in the States.

Tom Hopper: Yeah, it’s certainly been a gradual build. Now every time I go over to America, I get recognized. It’s always a bit like, Oh, yeah, I am that guy from that TV show. I forget sometimes that I do what I do. Once I did Black Sails and Game of Thrones, it kind of changed. I get recognized more over there than in the UK these days actually.

What do you hear on the streets?

“You’re Dickon Tarly!” I get that one a lot. I Feel Pretty is another one I never expected to get recognized from, but it was quite popular in the end.

Tom Hopper as Dickon Tarly in Game of Thrones.

HBO

The Umbrella Academy is sleek, but not your typical Spider-Man stuff. How do you explain the concept to people?

Really, it’s about a dysfunctional family. Yes, these are superheroes, but first and foremost they’re siblings who have a lot of issues, and they’ve been brought up to do a single job, which is to be superheroes who save the world. Their father who adopted them all sort of abused their childhood—he didn’t give them one. Now as 30-year-olds, they have all these major issues because of it. Can these guys actually get it together to save the world?

It’s a bit refreshing that it doesn’t revolve around the same characters we’ve seen rebooted a million times.

It’s a very unique show, it’s very different. It’s not all about just guns blazing and crazy superhero stuff. It actually grounds the superhero world, almost like, what would superheroes actually be like if they were in this world?

The main one would beTerminator 2: Judgment Day. I watched it [when I was] quite younger than I should’ve been on VHS over and over again. I was obsessed with Arnie. That’s what started my love of motorbikes as well: Arnie riding around on his Harley.

Do you own a motorcycle?

Not anymore. My wife says I shouldn’t really have one because I’ve got too many responsibilities having two children.

They are basically death traps.

Yeah, but I rent them when I have some time away. If I’ve got a nice sunny day in the country somewhere, I’ll find a Harley rental place.

All thanks to Terminator.

Yeah, Arnie was a huge influence in my film watching. I ended up loving everything else that he did.

Paul HarrisGetty Images

When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?

It was a slow process. I was into sport growing up, but I was always the one in the family who would goof around, do impressions of people. We used to go around to my grandparents'. I used to do all these impressions of politicians, and they found it so funny. At some point—I was like 15 or 16—there was a subject that I could choose, and I saw this one that said “drama,” and I thought, That looks like a laugh. Then I just caught this bug. I really looked forward to drama class. It was all I wanted to do. From there I went to drama school and fortunately found an agent at the end and started getting jobs.

It sounds like you’ve always been athletic, but how do you prepare to embody a superhero for people at home?

A lot of it is maintenance all year round. I do a pretty intensive training regimen. It comes down to making sure I’m putting the right things in my body to make sure I can maintain a certain physique for a job. I speak to the directors and find out how they want the character to look. With Umbrella Academy, I wore a big muscle suit—I won’t tell you why, I don’t want to give any spoilers. I had to get to a certain size and then maintain it throughout the 6-month shoot to fit the suit. The trouble was I sweated loads, I was burning a lot of calories in the suit, so I had to make sure I was getting enough calories.

What’s your favorite exercise?

What’s great is things that are flexible in terms of traveling—things you can take with you if you’ve got a crappy hotel gym. You need to know even if you only have two 45-lb. dumbbells, you can make a big workout out of that. I always think manmakers. You know manmakers?

I’ve never heard of it. Could you explain?

A manmaker is basically a lot of stuff on the floor [using two dumbbells, and broken down into a pushup, dumbbell row, squat clean, and thruster]. What’s great about that is you get multiple reps of various different movements, all compound movements—you’re using more muscle parts.

’The Umbrella Academy’

Courtesy of Netflix

It hits a lot more than a simple curl would.

Absolutely, it’s a full-body workout, so if you’ve only got a half-hour or 40 minutes, if you want to get big workout, I always find a manmaker is a really good one to throw in.

But you’re apparently not a fan of the treadmill.

The only ones [of those types of machines] I’m a fan of are the skier and rower because I find those a lot more functional and useful. And the bike as well. I find a treadmill fundamentally useless because I think it’s better to work out outside anyway, if you can to be in the fresh air. Also you’re not really running properly [on a treadmill], you’re not running at full capacity.

You know your stuff in the gym, clearly. Do you ever use a trainer?

No, I go solo. I have worked with trainers because they sometimes assign one to the whole [cast] on things, but I’ve done so much research and learning myself that I find I like to do my own routine. I like to feel how I feel on the day and go, Okay, I want to do this today. I don’t like idea of a trainer saying, “You’re gonna push harder today.” Because I might be like, I don’t feel like pushing harder, I’ll do that tomorrow. I think it’s really important to listen to your body and what feels good on the day. You may think, I don’t want to do a squat today, I’ve got bit of a sore knee.

I’ll have to try this manmaker.

Yeah, give it a try. Get a fairly decent weight that it would be tough, but a safe weight. Do 30 to 50 manmakers, just do sets of like five, and grind them out.

Paul SchrodtPaul Schrodt is a freelance writer and editor who also contributes to Esquire, GQ, Money, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

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